Last September, as part of a journalism fellowship, I visited Sacred Heart Cathedral in Lahore, Pakistan, for Sunday Mass.
Later I sat down with the barefoot priest to hear about the
discrimination and violence his congregation faces as minority
Christians in a Muslim country with draconian blasphemy laws, which
carry a death sentence.
The priest said his congregation drew closer in the face of persecution, including an attack on the church in 2008.
“They prefer to die in the church than in their houses,” he said.
On Easter Sunday, Pakistani Christians did not have to go to church to
die. They were attacked in a public park, near a children’s swingset. A suicide bomber associated with the Taliban
killed 70 people — most of them women and children — and injured 300.
That attack was a form of retaliation for the February execution of a
police guard who assassinated a politician seeking to reform the
nation’s blasphemy laws.
To hard-line Islamists and religious parties, any change to the
blasphemy laws is, well, blasphemous. They are campaigning to make the
convicted murderer an official martyr.
Before leaving for Pakistan, I thought countries that enforce blasphemy
laws — Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Indonesia, among others —
would eventually catch up to the rest of the world. Surely, it was a
matter of time until they realized free speech must trump religious
sensitivities.
My week in Lahore and Islamabad — also the scene of Easter violence over blasphemy laws
— changed that. After visiting Christian churches and minority Muslim
sects — each time passing barricaded metal gates, gun turrets and skeins
of razor wire — we met with an attorney who represents blasphemy
defendants, sometimes all the way to Pakistan’s Supreme Court.
This attorney recited case after case he had personally handled in
which people, usually Christians, were charged with tearing a page from
the Quran or insulting the Prophet Muhammad and were sentenced to death.
Usually, he said, the accusers were looking to settle a personal score
with the defendant or steal their wealth. The most notorious case is of Asia Bibi, a Christian mother and field worker facing execution for allegedly making derogatory remarks about the prophet.
But even this attorney — educated at an elite British university,
wearing an expensive western suit and speaking English as well as I do —
defended the laws. The American and Pakistani journalists in my group
challenged him:
Why should any religion be placed above the right to free expression?
Isn’t Islam tough enough to absorb the barbs of critics and cranks?
“You don’t understand,” he said after a few heated minutes. “We Muslims
have the highest possible love, affection, respect, honor for the
Prophet. Anything that goes against that feeling … incites passion and
where it incites passion it will lead to chaos, death and injury. So we
made the blasphemy law.”
We responded: But people everywhere feel like that about their various
faiths and most live in peace without executing those who think
otherwise.
No, he continued. “For me the law is valid because it is better to stop
violence than allow freedom of expression that will lead to violence,”
he said. “My issue is not with the law. My issue is with the abuse.”
I could feel my heart drop in my chest. If even this worldly man could
not be persuaded that freedom of conscience is the most important human
right, then what hope can we have that his country, with 191 million
people and a literacy rate of only 58 percent (47 percent among women) can be persuaded?
Seven months after my visit to Pakistan I remain pessimistic and
depressed about its future and the future of other Muslim-majority
countries. Looking at the pictures of the victims of the Easter blast —
only a minority of them Christian — I can’t help but remember the people
who welcomed us into their church for Mass last summer.
I hear the murmured prayers, the native instruments that accompanied
their hymns and their gentle voices as they offered us tea.
I also hear the constant cries of “persecution” coming from some
Christians in this country. Real persecution is being blown up in a
park. Real persecution is needing to erect fortified walls around your
place of worship.
Christians and other religious minorities in Pakistan could use a little bit of American Christian outrage on their behalf.
Kimberly Winston is a national reporter for RNS
Courtesy: Religion News Service
Photo: Family members mourn the death of a relative, who was killed
in a blast outside a public park on Sunday, during a funeral in Lahore,
Pakistan, on March 28, 2016.
Photo courtesy: REUTERS/Mohsin Raza
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